Everything and Nothing
by ScintillatingTart
Summary: This is Emily Prentiss's legacy.  Spoilers for 7x01 "It Takes a Village"


TITLE: Everything and Nothing  
>AUTHOR: ScintillatingTart<br>SPOILERS: All of season 6, and DEFITINTELY 7x01.  
>CHARACTERSPAIRINGS: Prentiss, Garcia, slight Morgan/Garcia  
>RATINGWARNINGS: T, minor language  
>SUMMARY: This was Emily Prentiss's legacy.<p>

DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything even remotely pertaining to Criminal Minds, and if I were to be sued for writing fanfic, they would laugh at the state of my bank accounts.

A/N: Just a little one-shot fill-in scene for "It Takes a Village". I somehow managed to toss this off in 10 minutes before leaving for work, and I rather like it.

Everything and Nothing  
>by ScintillatingTart<p>

"You've lost weight," Garcia said, not even lifting her eyes from the computer monitor. She knew the hesitant sounds of Emily Prentiss without even batting an eye. The Oracle of all things known and unknown made it her job to know.

"You have, too," Prentiss pointed out. "You look good, Penelope."

Garcia hadn't decided if she was going to be furious yet or not. She was, in order of greatest to least, ecstatic that Emily was alive and at least somewhat well, happy that they would finally get to have a real girl's night again, sad that Emily had to go that far in order to get away from her psycho ex-mark, and even sadder that she'd felt she had to leave them in the dark.

Hotch was on her list of people whose credit needed tweaking. And JJ wasn't out of the woods yet: Henry was about to get a case delivery of Pixi Stix, courtesy of Auntie Pellipee.

"Well, being under constant stress and depression will make you lose weight," Penelope finally hedged. No witty comebacks, nothing but the truth, cut and dried. "Look, I've lived off the grid: I know how hard it is to keep from calling your old contacts to keep them safe. But you could've left a note or, or something, because God forbid we know anything. We're your family, Emily."

"Hotch made that call," Prentiss said, squarely laying blame. "I just went with it in the hope that you were better than Doyle. Which is the truth, given who's sitting in an interrogation room at the moment. How long were you looking before you found him?"

Garcia finally turned to look at Prentiss. "What does it matter? We were too late. And now I'm backtracking through the wild jungle of people who hurt people in order to make money and I'm coming up with a lot of junk and nothing specific."

"Penelope, you're the best. If anyone can find where Declan is now, it's you."

"I'm up against a wall and a rock," Garcia said, shaking her head. "The All-knowing ain't got squat right now. It took months to find Doyle, and now I've only got hours to find Declan. Things changed, Emily."

Prentiss frowned. "Well, do the best you can. That's all I can ask."

"You could have left a note in code or something," Penelope accused. And there was the fury she'd been waiting for, had known was coming. "Or sent an email."

"Doyle employs the best hackers in the world," Prentiss protested.

"I know," Garcia snapped. "I turned him down flat when I was nineteen." She spun her chair away again, to confront the lists of craziness that were her searches that went nowhere and everywhere all at once. "There was a lot you could have done, Em. Blocking us out, blocking ME out, was stupid."

Prentiss sighed. "I know. But that was the condition of the deal."

"Don't think I don't know now that it was you that stole Strauss's login to keep tabs on Morgan and me," Garcia scolded. "I thought my unhackable system had been breached."

With that, she heard Prentiss crack a smile. "So, how's Kevin?" she inquired.

Garcia made what she hoped was a non-commital noise in the back of her throat. She printed off a few pages of photos and handed them to Emily. "I don't know what you're going to do with these, but you'd better do it fast," she said. She didn't want to talk about feelings with Emily Prentiss anymore.

Their friendship was at a stand-still till further notice.

She'd been ready to give everything to wipe Ian Doyle off the face of cyberspace and take him out herself just because he'd killed Emily Prentiss. And knowing that side of herself, face to face, had throttled Penelope from the inside. To see the woman whose honor she'd been so eager to avenge face to face, still alive, was killing her soul a lot more thoroughly.

And she would go to her grave knowing that what she'd done in the heat of revenge was going to haunt her for the rest of her life. She'd put a child in imminent peril. She'd succumbed to frustration and depression and anxiety and clung to Morgan like a lifeline; she could never tell anyone that she'd cheated on Kevin more than once out of sheer emotional frustration. And, least of everything, she'd given up on ever being happy again.

That was Emily Prentiss's legacy, and Penelope Garcia had a damn long way to go before she could glue the pieces of her shattered self together again.

Everything was back to normal, equilibrium restored.

Nothing was back to normal: the status quo was gone, blown the fuck out of the water.

All they had left was finding the boy.

Fin


End file.
